Equal or Lesser Value
by Lisse
Summary: The wrong family dies on Moonlight Bridge. Ten years later, Minako Arisato befriends the middle schooler trying to save the world.


**Equal or Lesser Value**

* * *

It's June, sticky and humid even this late at night. Minako looks up from her cell phone when the three Gekkoukan students wander into the corner shop and watches them, invisible as only a clerk can be. The two high schoolers are on edge, glancing out the window like they expect something to come running after them; the middle schooler is up to his elbows in the ice cream cooler.

" _Seriously?_ " the high schooler in the hat grumbles at him. "First Yuka-tan here almost gets us killed and now you want to stop for snacks?"

The middle schooler pulls out an ice cream sandwich, examines it, puts it back. "I'm hungry."

Minako slouches on the counter, propping herself up on her elbows. "Banana bars are half off if you buy three or more," she says, and they all turn and look at her. She's still wearing her Central Iwatodai uniform and has glittery pink barrettes in her hair. "My manager ordered too many. I want to get rid of them."

Without missing a beat, the middle schooler extracts three banana bars and makes a beeline for the cash register. Halfway there, he swerves long enough to snatch a large box of bandaids from the sale display, then sets everything neatly down in front of Minako and starts counting out coins.

"Neo Featherman?" she asks, quirking an eyebrow. "Really?"

He is half a head taller than her, long-limbed and rolled-out, and there is a bit of a bruise on one cheek. He also has a poker face to rival her twin brother's, except for the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. "Hawk's my favorite," he says, completely deadpan.

"Weirdo," Minako mutters.

* * *

She is the boss of Central Iwatodai High School. It's not a good school - it's not even a mediocre school - but under her regime cleaning rosters get followed, smokers are exiled to the roof, and anyone who ditches can expect to be dragged back to class, by force if necessary.

"You're the only person who cares," her brother points out. They are sitting in an empty classroom, picking at convenience store bento and sharing a pair of headphones between them. His name is Minato, he is thirteen minutes older than her, and he makes a great show of not giving a shit about anything.

"So what if I am?" she asks, grinning around a mouthful of rice. "Someone has to."

* * *

The middle schooler comes back. That all by itself makes him interesting enough to pay attention to.

"So I've got to ask," she says as he scans the selection of bandaids, a shopping basket firmly clutched in one hand. "What were you doing hanging out with a pair of high schoolers?"

He selects a box with Featherman Hawk on it. "Buying banana bars."

"I mean why were you _here_." She makes a sweeping gesture that she hopes will encompass not just the store, but the whole rundown neighborhood around it. The Kirijo Group has brought plenty of money to Iwatodai, but the area around the train station hasn't been much of a priority and it shows.

"Why not here?"

"Okay, now you're just being obtuse on purpose."

He does that little eye-crinkle thing she would never notice if she weren't already a world-class expert at translating her brother's silences into actual conversation. That makes her huff at him, because yes, he's totally doing this just to annoy her.

By the time he's finished shopping, his basket is full of cotton swabs and painkillers and pretty much anything else that could be used in an emergency. She's starting to wonder what kind of trouble he gets into that he needs all that stuff. He doesn't _look_ like the sort of kid to pick fights.

She looks down at the basket, then up at him, and smiles to show she isn't judging him. "Seriously. Why all this?"

He considers and eventually concludes, "I fall down a lot."

Maybe it's because she's been the neighborhood protector ever since she was young or maybe it's because he reminds her of Minato just a little, but something uneasy twists up inside her. She peers at him, trying to find something to latch onto - a smile, a frown, a change of pitch - but for all that she's so very good at knowing what other people are thinking, he's like a blank slate.

"Are you sure?" she asks.

"I think there should be a Featherman Cat," he says absently, like he didn't even hear her question.

She makes a face at him.

* * *

One of the third years threatens to put her name on that stupid revenge request website after she breaks up his own personal Central Iwatodai extortion ring. She laughs in his face and wishes him good luck with that ("Go ahead, Sato-senpai!") and knows he's too much of a coward.

Then one of his buddies threatens to put her brother's name on it instead.

She corners him in the boys' bathroom, flashes a smile made of spun sugar, and points a broken broomstick at him like it's a weapon. "Try it and I'll smash your kneecaps," she says.

There's never any doubt that she will, because she isn't a coward and she always follows through on her promises, good or bad. No one at Central Iwatodai particularly _likes_ her - no one calls to ask her how she's doing, no one ever invites her out for lunch - but they respect how hard she can hit. She's the boss for a reason.

* * *

"How do you know so much about Neo Featherman?" she grumbles at the middle schooler. He's becoming a regular. She no longer has to be professional, if she ever was.

He's buying soda and more painkillers today. "You mean you don't?" he asks, and she can't for the life of her tell if he's being serious or not.

"Most people our age don't."

This gets a shrug out of him. "Maybe most people our age don't have a little sister."

He says it like he's playing a trump card.

* * *

The car accident ten years ago left her father with a permanent limp. He lost his office job when Minako was eight and took up full-time alcoholism as a hobby soon after. Her mother had screaming nightmares of her own and finally gave up and left when Minako was ten.

When she was twelve, the boy next door called them both all sorts of horrible names. She punched him hard enough to knock out a tooth and lost her Gekkoukan scholarship on account of her violent and unbecoming behavior.

She doesn't regret a thing.

(The boy and his friends try to jump her a few weeks later. Minato sneaks up behind them and clocks the biggest of them with a trash can lid. He loses his scholarship, too.

That, she regrets.)

* * *

"So what's your name?" she asks. It's well into late summer and she is so ready to be done with the humidity.

The middle schooler is looking through the drinks with what's clearly an exasperated frown, and she's not sure if that's because he's being more open around her than before or she's just gotten better at reading him. He's wearing jeans and a neat button-down shirt and perfectly clean sneakers, all different varieties of gray. It looks like someone's washed all the color out of him.

"What's wrong with Neo Featherman?" he asks absently.

"What if you come to my school next year? How am I supposed to introduce you? Because I am not calling you Featherman Hawk."

"Cat."

"That's even worse!"

He doesn't look away from the drinks, but she sees his mouth turn up at the corners. "I'm not going to your school. Or to Gekkoukan," he adds when she opens her mouth. "I'm going back home after graduation."

"Where's home?"

"Somewhere you've never heard of."

Oh great, he's from the sticks. No wonder he's always wandering around the worst part of Iwatodai by himself.

Now she _has_ to look out for him. It's practically a moral obligation. He probably has all the survival instincts of a poleaxed goldfish.

"My name's Minako," she tells him. "You can call me Minako-senpai. Or Minako-sama if you're feeling really generous. And if you tell me what you're looking for, maybe I can help you find it."

She can practically see the wheels in his head turning while he considers this. Finally he holds out a folded piece of paper with katakana scrawled on it. "Souji," he says, "and I really hope you have a drink called an Elizabeth. This is the fifteenth store I've tried today."

* * *

Right after the second semester starts, someone corners Sato-senpai behind the train station and shoots him dead. The rumor that races around Central Iwatodai in the aftermath is that someone put his name on the revenge website, which is all too plausible. He was a bully and a horrible person and Minako can't think of a single person who genuinely liked him.

But he shouldn't have died, she thinks with bile churning in her stomach. She feels responsible for him, because someone should. Someone needs to care.

The police come to school and talk to everyone with grudges against him, which in Sato-senpai's case is more or less the entire student body. Minako says what she knows - which isn't much - and then sits with her hands clasped in her lap. "Is it true?" she asks. "That the time of death is weird? I heard two of the other cops saying that."

This particular police officer's name is Kurosawa. He gives her a long look and then shuts his notepad with a flick of his wrist.

"Trust me," he says - not the way some adults say it, not like a command. "There are some things you're really better off not knowing."

She bites her lip to hold back a retort.

Everyone deserves the truth. Even someone as bad as Sato-senpai.

* * *

"I think you need these bandages more than I do," Souji tells her as he brings what's turning into his weekly haul up to the counter.

She grins at him and points at her own face. "This? Nah, it's just a split lip. Some kids for my school were robbing people behind the train station. I told them to cut it out."

"You shouldn't go back there," he says, suddenly very serious. "It's dangerous."

At least he's got _some_ common sense. "Of course it's dangerous." She doesn't tell him that someone at her school died there, or that Sato-senpai is why she keeps trying to make the other Central Iwatodai students go to school and stay out of trouble, without much success. He doesn't need to hear any of that. "That's why I need to be there," she explains instead. "I'm a class president, you know. It's my job to keep people safe."

"By yourself? You didn't have anyone to help you?"

That gets a laugh. The only person she's ever trusted to watch her back is her brother. "I said class president, not gang leader."

"You're kind of scary, though."

"And you're kind of a punk," she retorts, sticking out her tongue. "Don't disrespect your senpai. And you shouldn't go behind the train station, either. There are some real creeps there, not just other high schoolers."

Souji's expression darkens. "Really?" he asks, far too casual for her to believe there's only curiosity in his question.

She sees the shadows under his eyes sometimes, or the bruises and cuts on his arms. He's not her underclassman, but somewhere along the line he became someone she takes an interest in - someone else she needs to protect. If she ever figures out who's hurting him, she's going to go after them with more than just her fists, creeps behind the train station or not.

"Nobody you need to worry about," she says, the perfect picture of nonchalance. "Just watch out for yourself. Maybe find a safer place to buy stuff for all those first aid kits you're making."

"I can't. No one else has Featherman Hawk bandaids."

She's almost sure that he's not joking. Almost.

What a weirdo, she thinks. A good kid, but a weirdo.

* * *

Her mother used to pay for cram school for her and her brother. In their last year of middle school, Minato called her at her brand new Tokyo apartment and asked if she could just send cash instead, on account of how their father had lost his job again and the water was about to be shut up. Then he held the phone at arm's length and channel surfed while waiting for the accusations of guilt-tripping to stop. Minako watched, chewing on a hangnail and pretending to do her homework and wondering if that corner shop down the street was willing to pay her under the table if she took a midnight shift.

The water stayed on, though, and the bill's been paid like clockwork since then. She's pretty sure Minato's telling their mother the exact amounts every single month. He denies everything.

She wants to be a doctor or a scientist or maybe a professional chef. Her brother wanted to be a pilot when he was little, but there is a boundary dividing their lives into _before_ and _after_ , with the car accident solidly the middle.

It could be worse, she knows. She's read the statement her father gave to the police. Her family's car just crashed into a guardrail and crumpled like paper. The car in front of them - the one that cut them off as they were turning onto the bridge, honking and pulling ahead of them in its rush to get somewhere it would never reach - was nothing but a burnt-out shell.

So she's lucky, she tells herself. She ought to be cheerful and happy. It's practically her responsibility.

"You're so busy all the time," her brother tells her, flopped stomach-down on the floor of their apartment, unfinished math problems scattered around him. "It's tiring."

"Don't be lazy," she chirps, and pokes him in the ribs with her stocking feet until he throws a workbook at her.

* * *

This time, Souji comes in trailing a little girl with a red backpack. She's very small and very adorable and toting around a little cardboard container full of those awful takoyaki from the strip mall.

"Is that your sister?" Minako asks instead of saying hello.

He blinks at her, then down at the little girl. "My Iwatodai sister," he answers, which makes the little girl's face split into a wide grin.

"Some big brother you are, feeding her poison takoyaki."

"What's wrong with them?" he asks, looking honestly confused.

Well, he is the one who always buys out her whole stock of Chewing Soul candy and that stuff tastes like feet, so maybe he just likes terrible things. That would explain the Neo Featherman obsession.

He turns toward the drinks cooler and suddenly she sees the bruising and the burn running up his arm. It's nastier than any injury she's ever seen on him. Her fingernails scrape against the counter as she closes them into fists, suddenly furious for reasons she can't even put into words.

"So what are you here for?" she asks brightly. "More gross candy?"

"Mad Bull," he says, already pulling cans out of the cooler. "Maiko-chan and I are going to have a long talk about not running away." The little girl's smile instantly turns into a stream of takoyaki-muffled protests, which he ignores. "We need drinks for that."

Once she's totaled up the Mad Bulls and handed one to the waiting little girl, he begins to count out coins to pay her, just like he always does. She has no idea why he has so much spare change; she's asked, but half the time he tells her that he's mugging shadow monsters for their money and half the time he tells her he's looting the dorm vending machine on a regular basis. While he's counting, she smiles down at the little girl and says, "Why don't you go wait over by the window? It's going to take a while for your big brother to pay with all these coins."

"Okay!" The little girl scurries over to the other side of the store, apparently content to wait forever as long as she has her soda and takoyaki that could probably be classified as a biohazard. Minako goes back to the register and tries to ignore the feeling that Souji's eyes are burning holes in her head.

She waits until she's handing him his receipt before she looks at him again, dropping her voice to a whisper and not even bothering to sugar-coat her words. "What happened to you?"

He looks down at the burn like he forgot it was there. "Oh. A table jumped on me."

"No, it didn't."

"It was on fire."

He's so earnest that she could almost believe he's telling the truth, if what he's saying was even the least bit plausible. "Is there someone I need to beat up? Because I will."

For some reason, that makes him grin. "I wish you could. You'd be good at it."

She plants her hands flat on the counter and stretches herself up as high as she can without doing something ridiculous like standing on her toes. It only gets her up to his chin - when did he grow, that's not fair - but it's enough for her to really look him in the eyes. "You promise you come talk to me if you're really in trouble. I mean it."

And maybe because she _does_ mean it, sincerity flowing from each word like spilled blood, he doesn't point out what a strange thing that is for a random cashier to say to him. Instead he looks down and nods. "Okay. I promise."

Coming from him, it's just as binding as any contract.

* * *

Two nights later a Gekkoukan student dies the same way Sato-senpai did.

When she hears the name, she feels a little guilty at the relief that floods through her. It was a high schooler, a third year.

Not anyone she knew.

* * *

Central Iwatodai students keep venturing behind the train station. She keeps following them and telling them to go back to class, damnit. Someone has to care what happens to them.

"What if you meet the murderer?" her brother asks as she storms out of the school. He's reached out and caught her sleeve, fingers curled in the fabric like a claw. "You're not bulletproof."

He follows her to the train station anyway, where he stands behind her, slouched against a wall with his hands in his pockets and his headphones on, and trips a guy who tries to pull a knife on her.

Minato's the only person she'll ever trust to watch her back.

* * *

It's not that she means to take such an interest in her customers' lives, if for no other reason than it feels voyeuristic. She learned a long time ago that not everyone can read other people's expressions like open books - not everyone can use a smile or a frown or a tremor in someone's voice to decide exactly what to say. It's one of the ways she rules her school and makes herself too invaluable to be ostracized. If she is all things to all people, cheerful and happy and always ready with the right words at the right time, no one will care about the drunken fit her father threw in the street or the way her mother abandoned them. No one will so much as look at her brother wrong.

But even if she weren't so very good at this, even if she hadn't extracted a promise out of him, she thinks she would remember Souji.

"Don't you have any friends your own age?" she asks one day.

He looks up from the bandages she's started keeping by the counter for him, ready whenever he comes looking for them. "Why?"

"You've come into this store with everything except other middle schoolers, that's why." She folds her arms and smiles at him in a way she usually reserves for her brother. "Do I need to kick Gekkoukan's ass for you?"

" _No_ ," he says very quickly, like he's still under the impression she's some kind of rampaging gang leader. "I do have middle school friends. Just…" He trails off with a shrug.

But she's good at reading people, even teenagers with poker faces and encyclopedic Neo Featherman knowledge. "They're back home, huh?"

He nods, not looking up from the bandaids he's seen dozens of times before. "I transferred here in March. I won a scholarship, and I promised my aunt I would try Gekkoukan for a year."

"Are you sorry you did?"

The box gets turned over so he can pretend to read the other side. "It's okay," he says, but what Minako hears is a drumbeat litany of _yes, god yes, I don't belong here, I want to go home._

She can strike up a conversation with anyone in Iwatodai, but she's not close to anyone, not really - no one except her brother. She knows that's not how it works for regular people who aren't watching their family cave in around them, and she wonders what it's like to be so connected to friends and neighbors and strangers on the street that it hurts to be separated from them.

It's not something she ever wants to find out.

"So go home," she says.

He looks up at her, startled.

"Go home. Seriously." She smiles again, knows it's brittle at the edges and doesn't care. "You tried. Gekkoukan's not worth being miserable over."

It's like watching a wall go up in front of his face. "I can't," he says.

"Oh, yeah? Why not?"

"Who else will buy Featherman Hawk?" he asks, holding up the box, and whatever glimpse she got into his thoughts is gone as quickly as it appeared.

She makes a face at him, but rings him up and gives him a discount. "For being annoying," she explains.

For the burns and bruises, she doesn't say. For not being able to tell her the truth.

* * *

"I want to be a police officer," she announces.

Her brother opens one eye and looks at her. They are sprawled in front of the TV, the pair of them. There's a variety show on, indistinguishable from all the others; a comedian is doing a stand-up routine and pantomiming being too drunk to walk. Last night their father was in particularly fine form and between her and her brother they poured two cases of beer down the sink and now everything smells of stale booze.

"I would be amazing," she continues. "I could be a detective and solve mysteries. You can be my sidekick."

He throws one arm over his eyes. "It's Sunday," he grumbles. "Why are you awake?"

"Because it's almost noon."

"Why do _I_ have to be awake?"

"Noon," she repeats, then waits for him to blink at her again before she flashes a dazzling smile full of lots of teeth. "Like I was saying, we can be detectives and solve mysteries. It'll be amazing."

He rolls his eyes, or at least the one she can see. "Or I'll work at Wuck for the rest of my life."

She smacks him over the head with a handy cushion. "Not happening. We're a team."

"We'll both work at Wuck."

"It'll be the best Wuck in existence," she retorts. "We'll solve crimes with burgers."

He mutters something about unreasonable bothersome sisters and closes his eyes like he can force himself back to sleep with sheer willpower. On TV, the comedian pratfalls off the stage and the audience laughs like it's the funniest thing in the world.

* * *

One day she unlocks the store and there's someone already inside it.

Minako freezes in the doorway, fingers still curled around the keys. For a split second she thinks _Souji_ \- but then she sees the shape of the face and the rumpled middle school uniform and the yellow scarf and wonders how she ever made that mistake in the first place.

"What are you doing here?" She can sound scary when she wants to. "Who are you?"

The kid doesn't move. He just stares at her with old eyes and a smile that doesn't quite sit properly on his face.

"Oh," he says sadly. "I see now. The other car."

She will never be able to explain the ice-cold fear that stabs through her. " _Get out_."

He does, sort of. One moment he's there and the next he just...isn't. She's not entirely sure she didn't dream him up.

When she finally does manage to move, she goes behind the counter and sits down on one of the stools she's constructed for herself out of old Cielo Mist crates and clenches her hands into fists. It takes five minutes for them to stop trembling.

"Do you remember the other car?" she asks her father later, when he's in spitting distance of sobriety.

He looks at her like she's lost her mind. "Why the hell would I want to?"

* * *

The very idea of a doomsday cult is like fingernails on a chalkboard to her. She reads about it in the newspaper and hears it whispered in the hallways at Central Iwatodai, and it goes against everything she believes in deep down in her bones.

The end of the world means giving up. Minako's never given up on anyone in her life.

"Why can't you care about something else?" she says to the classmate who makes the mistake of mentioning it to her. She wants to punch something and she doesn't know why. "Why can't you care about the school or the city or _anything?_ "

"Don't you realize you're the only one who gives a shit?" the other girl mutters. "There's a reason no one likes you."

Minako slams the side of her fist into the wall right next to the other girl's face and takes far too much pleasure in seeing her flinch. "If I don't care, who's going to?" she snaps back. "Someone has to."

Her brother finds her eating her lunch on the roof, out in the cold where she won't have to deal with anyone, and sits next to her and gives her melon bread he undoubtedly stole from someone's bookbag.

"Quit worrying about the whole school," he tells her.

She knocks shoulders with him and tells him to keep his trap shut.

* * *

Souji comes into the store late at night at the end of December. He is ashen, like someone drained all the blood out of him, and keeps fiddling with his phone.

"It broke," he says as Minako rises slowly from her stool behind the register. "I must have dropped it."

She thinks of the boy with the yellow scarf, the one she mistook for him. "Do you need to use mine?"

"My little sister...she's probably already asleep. And my aunt too. I bet my uncle's working late again." He clutches the phone in a white-knuckled grip, and now she can see the cracks in it. It looks like someone hit it with a sledgehammer. When he sees her looking at it, he shoves it in a pocket and papers a smile over his face. "It's okay. It doesn't really matter. I'll call them tomorrow, if I remember."

Without really thinking what she's doing, she comes around the counter. He watches her as she flips the sign on the door to _Closed_ and the points to the second crate stool. "Sit."

He shakes his head. "I need to go back to the dorm. I have to - "

" _Sit_ ," she repeats, putting some benevolent high school dictator steel into her voice.

This time he does, and she plops down on her stool so she's facing him. Even like this, he's still taller than her.

He's also only fourteen years old. He's _young_. Normally this is just a fact - he's like an underclassman, like a little brother she'll never have, he's someone she needs to protect.

Today it hits her like a punch in the gut.

"Listen," she says, slowly and carefully because he's not like everyone else, she can't read his face and know what she needs to say. "I don't know what's going on, but I know you're in some kind of trouble. I'd have to be pretty blind not to. So you tell me how to help and I'll do it."

She expects him to square his shoulders and collect himself and give some kind of quip about stocking more Neo Featherman bandaids, but not this time. He just sits there, shaking hands clenched over his knees, blinking down at the linoleum floor the same way she does when she wants to cry and knows she can't.

"There's nothing you can do about it," he says in that perfectly calm voice of his. She has to strain to hear any tremors in it. "I've just got something I need to figure out today. I'll be okay."

It's not said the same way she would say it - no big bright smiles, no pounding her fist into her palm like she's about to take on the whole world - but she knows those words too well and has used that tone of voice too many times, ever since her family started to crack in the middle. She knows what it's like being the only one holding it together, while her father drinks and her mother runs away and her brother works so hard to pretend nothing matters anymore.

She reaches over and hugs him.

He doesn't hug her back, but he leans forward and rests his forehead on her shoulder and just sits there, shaking like the world is collapsing under his feet.

"My phone's over on the counter there," she says, like she isn't the only thing keeping him upright. "Call your sister. Then figure out whatever you need to figure out." She looks up at fluorescent light flickering on the ceiling and wishes she could actually _do something_ besides echo his own words back at him. "You'll be okay. Promise."

Maybe that's why the cult bothers her so much. She can't give up, no matter how awful the world is sometimes. She _can't_.

Someone has to care.

* * *

Her father's already asleep when she gets home that night. She's timed her comings and goings well enough that she hasn't spoken to him in almost a week. Minato's sitting on the floor in front of the TV and wordlessly holds a cup noodle out to her as she comes in, his brow furrowing as he sees whatever it is in her expression that she hasn't been able to hide.

"What happened?" he asks as she tosses the cup noodle aside and goes rummaging through the refrigerator instead. There must be something here she can make a proper meal out of. They have to be that normal, at least.

"Nothing happened. I went to work." She slams the fridge shut and starts methodically opening cabinet doors. Stupid useless family with its stupid useless empty shelves.

"Sure." His voice is flat and disbelieving.

"Don't talk to me."

"Okay," he agrees, but when she glances over at him, that troubled expression hasn't left his face.

The only things in the kitchen is a single spring onion and jar of shrimp paste. She chops the onion up to sprinkle on her cup noodle so she can at least pretend she's eating healthy and makes a note to go grocery shopping tomorrow. Her brother just keeps watching her and eventually she can't take it anymore. " _What?_ "

He doesn't say anything.

She's supposed to be the one with her life together. This isn't how it works. "Sorry," she mutters, flashing a smile at him before she goes back to the noodles, wondering if he'll tell her what he's thinking or not. Minato's strange in that he mostly discusses things that don't matter to him, which is why she knows for certain that last year he got caught dating four girls at once - which seriously, _who does that_ \- but has to deduce when their father is being more of an asshole than usual by the number of beers he empties down the sink.

"Do you remember the other car?" he asks out of the blue.

Right. She wasn't ready for that.

Minako bites her lip and pushes thoughts about the police report away. As much as her family frustrates her - as much as she hates them sometimes for not letting her be angry at the world, just for five minutes - she knows deep down in her bones how close she came to losing everyone. She also knows how close she came to dying, and in some ways that's even worse.

What kind of terrible sister would she have been, leaving Minato all alone?

"Why are you even asking about that?" she grumbles.

He points at the TV with a chopstick. The news is on and the announcer is droning on about crime statistics, and between that and Apathy Syndrome and the cult and all the dead students, it doesn't take a genius to see where this is going.

"Nothing's going to happen to me," she says as she settles herself and her noodles next to him on the floor. She seems to be making a lot of promises today. "Not with you watching my back."

He rolls his eyes and ducks out of the way when she tries to punch his shoulder.

* * *

The damn doomsday cult burrows into Iwatodai like a parasite. Minako can't go five minutes without hearing about it - from classmates, from teachers, from neighbors, from perfect strangers who obviously can't see that she's on her very last nerve.

"I'm going to murder the next person who tells me about _Nyx-sama_ ," she grits out through a smile that's mostly teeth, making the name drip saccharine sweetness.

Her brother, walking beside her, doesn't comment and doesn't break stride as he tears one of the posters off the wall and methodically shreds it into confetti.

"Someone tried to talk to Dad about Nyx while you were at work yesterday," he says like he's discussing the weather. "He threw a brick at them."

Minako feels a rare surge of filial affection. "Want to come do my English homework for me? The store's not going to be busy."

He shrugs and rips down another poster. "Yeah, sure."

As it turns out, no one comes in at all. Minako's not sure if it's because of the chill January weather or the fear of Apathy Syndrome or the fascination with the end of the world that everyone outside the Arisato family seems to have developed, but it gives her time to do her brother's math problems while he reminds her how English verbs work.

When she hears the door open, she looks up, ready to inform whoever's wandered in that if they so much as breathe a word about the glory of Nyx-sama, she'll hit them with a mop. Then she sees who it is. "Souji-kun!"

He looks better, somehow. More certain. It's nice to see. He's also holding a crumpled-up poster. "Someone taped this the wall outside the store."

" _Again?_ " She grabs the wastebasket from behind the counter and holds it up so he can toss the poster in the trash; he shoots like he's playing basketball and scores a fairly decent three-pointer. "We just took down a bunch a couple hours ago. They're everywhere."

"Not a fan?"

"I'm whatever the opposite of a fan is. I am the _queen_ of opposite fans." She holds an appropriately regal pose for a moment and then slouches against the counter. "It's annoying, that's what it is. It means people want to give up just because things aren't easy for them."

He makes a show of examining the drinks. "What if it was true? What if Nyx turns out to be real and the world ends tomorrow?"

If it were anyone else, she would be telling him to quit proselytizing - but she can't imagine Souji believing in that kind of thing, and for all that he has the sort of poker face that would give veteran gamblers a heart attack, at the moment he looks a little like a kicked puppy.

She grins. "So what if it does? If Nyx tries to end the world, I'll break her nose."

He makes a noise that's too strained to be a laugh. "I don't think it's that easy."

"Maybe not, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't try. I don't give up."

"You shouldn't either," her brother adds, so suddenly that she almost falls off her stool. He hasn't even looked up from the math workbook, but he does point his pencil in her general direction. "If you give up, she'll just get mad."

Souji blinks at him, almost like he forgot Minato was even there, and then laughs for real this time. "That sounds scary."

"You have no idea," he says solemnly. "So don't do it."

Once Souji's purchased his drink and the doors have slid shut behind him, Minako turns and looks at her brother. "You want to tell me what that was all about?"

"What was what about?"

She points in the general direction of the door. " _That._ "

"You're noisy when you're angry," he says, turning a page in his workbook. "It's annoying."

It occurs to her that in some ways, her brother's more opaque than Souji could ever hope to be.

* * *

The next day she holds her broken broomstick like a naginata and her brother wields a baseball bat like a sword and they fight back to back against the end of the world as the moon tumbles out of the sky.

But she doesn't remember this, not until it's much too late.

* * *

Souji reappears in March, looking as pale as a sheet and like something ran him over. Minako flings her math workbook over her shoulder, hops over the counter, and catches him in a delighted hug before he can duck.

"I guess you remember me," he says when she finally lets go of him.

"You _guess?_ Where have you been? Do you know how many Neo Featherman bandages I'm stuck with, you jerk?" She pulls him toward the back of the store, flipping the sign on the door to _Closed_ on the way, and pushes him down onto her stool. "Didn't you graduate yet? Aren't you supposed to be going back to whatever little town you're from? Seriously, you look like shit."

He starts grinning.

"Quit disrespecting your senpai," Minako orders with absolutely no heat whatsoever. She passes him one of the Mad Bulls she hasn't gotten around to sticking on the shelf yet. "Here, drink this. It's got caffeine or something in it. And answer my questions."

He takes the Mad Bull, but doesn't open it. "I graduate tomorrow. My family's coming."

"And then you get to go back home, huh?"

That gets a small smile and a nod.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner? I would've gotten you a present." She casts about the store for a moment and finally settles on one of the bandages boxes, a marker, and a price tag she hasn't gotten around to using yet. A few questionable artistic skills later, she's holding it out to him.

He blinks down at it. "Featherman Cat?"

"Don't look at me, it was your idea."

"Thanks," he says very gravely and tucks it into his bag. Suddenly he is quiet and serious in a way a freaking middle schooler has no business being. "For everything, I mean. You helped. A lot."

"Yeah, well." She folds her arms and looks away, embarrassed. She's never actually been thanked before. "Are things better now?"

"I think so."

Minako still wants to know what sort of hell he was going through and if there's anyone she should have beaten up over it, but for the first time in her life - and there are so many firsts with this damn kid - she's at a loss for words.

She'll work up the guts to ask him later, after the ceremony tomorrow. Let him rest now.

There will be plenty of time after graduation.


End file.
